Squads formed in 90 police stations for intelligence gathering

Mumbai: Learning lessons from the 26/11
terror attack, police has formed special squads in all the 90
police stations in the city to collect inputs in a bid to
strengthen its intelligence gathering.

This is for the first time that squads have been
formed for intelligence gathering at police station level.

A team of four -- Sub-Inspector and three constables
-- has been formed in every police station and assigned the
task of collecting information and updating Joint Commissioner
of Police (Law and Order), Rajnish Seth.

Seth, after getting such information, would in turn
brief the city Police Chief D Sivanandan.

"The idea of setting up such squads was to strengthen
the intelligence gathering. These cops would regularly collect
information and neutralise threat, besides doing other police
station related jobs as and when required," Sivanandan told
a news agency.

The city has 90 police stations which has been divided
into five zones. These squads would be consistently working on
cultivating their informants, gathering information and
updating their superiors.

This would help police in preventing any untoward
incident, the Police Commissioner said.

At present, crime branch and special branches are
involved in information gathering. However, following the
26/11 attack a need was felt to make stronger the network
of intelligence gathering and thus the idea emerged to form
squads in police stations, Sivanandan said.

Besides city police, State Intelligence Department and
Central agencies including Intelligence Bureau (IB) are
working at grassroot level to collect intelligence inputs.

Months after the Mumbai terror attacks, the city
police had also formed Quick Response Teams (QRT) to rescue
hostages and render assistance to Central forces and other
state forces in case of any untoward incident.